A traffic exchange is a model of web site on the Internet, which provides a service for webmasters to exchange of traffic. It is equivalent to the auto surf concept with the exception that usually traffic exchanges operate a manual rotation, because if they use auto rotation, then they are actually auto surf. If traffic exchanges mean money, they never promise a certain profit over a certain time but rather truly focus on the advertising, generally structured in a way that income will exceed what they promise to pay out.

Usually, a traffic exchange site receives submissions of web sites. They sign up for traffic exchange networks. The person who submitted the website then has to browse other member sites on the exchange program to earn credits, which allow their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system. This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved.

Exchanges generally enforce a 2 to 1 or 4 to 1 credit ratio, a quantity that denotes the proportional amount or magnitude of one quantity relative to another, meaning members earn 0.5 or 0.25 in credit for visiting one member site, and each credit is translated to one page view for them. However, this ratio can often be upgraded to better ratios such as 1 to 1.

In theory, website owners would visit other sites through the exchanges surf system and thus channel more traffic back to their own sites. As the casual watchers are all website owners or businessmen, it is possible that some of them might hopefully find particular member sites interesting and thus make note of them on their own sites, sending more traffic their way.

Almost all traffic exchange programs are free, although many of them offer special features to paid members and offer credits for purchase. It goes to depend on its budget.

Almost all traffic exchange programs actively urge users to build their own referral networks, which would in turn help the referrers accumulate more credits. For example, when a referred member receives credits through browsing, the referrer would get a small portion of the credits earned. It can be a good way to get more traffic.

In practice, traffic exchange programs are largely used by home based business work owners or marketers who either want free advertising or use the exchange programs for low budget advertisement campaigns.

The utility of at least some of these programs is doubtful, as many people simply forget sites once the time limit is up as they are only interested in promoting their own site. Also, a small number of users may simply purchase credits because of their typically low price.

How much traffic you get will depend on how long you spend visiting other sites. It will take time to get some results. On average I found that you could get about 50 visits in return for about a hour surfing.

One used way to successfully use a traffic exchange is setting up a landing page to advertise and specifically to catch the rapt attention of markets. It may bring a better valued response from the visitors, because you have got 30 seconds or less to grab their attention.

At least, I have used Fire Fox to make traffic exchange work. It is easy to use and I have working better to this browser.